Gary Hart: From Unthinkable To Unelectable To Unstoppable?

December 30, 1987|By William Safire, (copyright) 1987, New York Times News Service.

WASHINGTON — The hidebound power brokers of the Democratic political establishment must be in cahoots with the panjandrums of the media mafia to bring about the nomination of Gary Hart.

His populist strategy could not have been made more plain: to go over the heads of the politicians and pundits who condemned him, and by goading them to new heights of arrogance, to ``let the people decide`` if his admitted private transgressions made him ineligible for public office.

Both pols and pundits fell all over themselves to cooperate with the Hart strategy.

Democratic muckeymucks fumed at the colossal gall of the man, to seek a comeback without clearing it with them; the Democratic national chairman broke the rules of neutrality to humph loudly; the six-pack of candidates in the field were horror-struck at the prospect of competition from a famous campaigner.

But outraged mediamucks outdid even the apoplectic pols. By what right did anyone refuse to bow to the sober moral judgment of the keyhole press?

The psychiatric couch potatoes of talk shows and news magazines fixated on Hart`s ulterior motive-as if the motive of all the other candidates was something far nobler than a normal desire to run the country or a politician`s need to be No. 1.

Thus has the Hart strategy been successful so far; the pols and the press are lined up nicely against Hart and the people. Can the discipline be maintained?

This Hart honeymoon of monolithic opposition can`t last. Sooner rather than later, some shrewd old Democratic pols will grasp the coming Affinity of the Outsiders: A Southern maverick tells me that Jesse Jackson, who will have a large bloc of delegates at the convention, already has made a welcoming overture by telephone to the man he sees as a potential winner.

We`ll see a handful of savvy pols quietly move toward Hart, followed by a couple of constituency-conscious feminists.

Worse, the media pendulum will swing, as it always does; a few reporters will undertake contrarian analysis and stop scorning the Hart campaign as

``self-resurrected.`` A liberal pundit or two (not suspect, as I am, of delighting in Democratic disarray) will note that Hart is actually making

``tough choices`` in handwritten speeches.

The ready availability of Hart on substantive matters contrasts with the remoteness of others. Mario Cuomo, for example, the Democrats` last-ditch stop-Hart candidate, limits appearances to creampuff forums where he can avoid tough questions on his Gorbachev-gushing.

In that light and at that point, with politicians hedging their bets and the huffy media losing their indignation, the initial Hart anti-

establishmentarianism will have to adapt. As a Hart nomination ceases to be unthinkable, his party opponents will press the claim that he is

``unelectable.`` The perfect antidote to this can`t-win poison called

``unelectability``: victories in primaries.

The united front against Hart, so helpful to him, will crumble soon after he has used it as a launching pad. Then he will have to answer the subsequent ``unelectable`` charge by winning most of the weekly primary elections. And, at the convention, the anybody-but-Gary die-hards will be forced to test the strength of the Affinity of the Outsiders.